A huge "bang for the buck" FAIL!!!



Alfonso Soriano began the season as the Yankees’ everyday designated hitter and Ichiro Suzuki began the season on the Yankees’ bench, but now they’re being platooned in right field … at a combined salary of $25 million.

Yankees manager Joe Girardi has decided to play Soriano almost exclusively versus left-handed pitching because at age 38 he’s really struggled versus right-handers this season. On the flip side, Girardi has decided to give Suzuki the heavy portion of the platoon, playing him versus right-handers, because at age 40 he’s hitting .309 with a .371 on-base percentage.

It’s a solid platoon situation, if not for the fact that both players are big names making big money, but that isn’t as much of an issue for the Yankees as it might be for other teams and, in Soriano’s case, the Cubs still are on the hook for most of his salary anyway.

francis, did you hear that jeter isnt a compiler? hes 5th in hits!

Has any SS who has played that position exclusively for 20 years ever had a negative defensive WAR?

Defensively, Jeter is the Manny Ramirez of Shortstops

Imagine a professional athlete in a team sport putting his *individual* accomplishments on his cl
eats for all to read, topped with the shoes he is wearing calling himself "The King of NY." You would think that was pretty tacky, right? Especially when the star in question plays for a team that doesn't even put players' names on the back of the uniforms. But when the athlete in question is Derek Jeter, some Yankee fans contort themselves to defend this self-aggrandizing stunt, even though the cleats go against everything they purport to admire about the Captain -- his team-first attitude, humility, and desire to avoid individual attention.

But as I have learned over the years, if you ever want to get people really angry, especially Yankees fans, just say something, anything critical about Jeter. That is something I experienced on Facebook yesterday after my friend Jeff asked for my opinion about Jeter's new cleats. I missed seeing them this week, but when I saw the New York Post story on them, I was appalled. Aside from him calling himself "The King of NY," which is self-aggrandizing enough (Is this how he is going to outdo Joe DiMaggio when he is introduced during future Old-Timers' Days? Is there a Bob Sheppard audio in the vaults somewhere that will solemnly declare, "Number 2, Derek Jeter, the King of NY"?) there is also the way "MVP" is in big bold letters, with "All-Star" in tiny letters above it. (Jeter, who some of his acolytes like to think is the greatest player of all time, never won an American League MVP.) The five championships are in tiny type, too, with things like the Silver Slugger awards getting much more space on his shoes.

There are also not one but two mentions of those five Gold Gloves Jeter won, even though the last few were hardly deserved. There is also not just "respect" spelled with a 2, but "captain." Good grief. In short, these cleats are a hot mess.

Put it this way -- Ray Lewis had his own individual accomplishments on the cleats he wore in his last Super Bowl, but he had the words on the bottom of the shoes, not, like Jeter's, on the cleats themselves for everybody else to read. Nor did Lewis call himself "The King of Baltimore" or any such nonsense; instead, the visible part of the shoe had Psalms 91. (Hat tip to Baseball Think Factory for the info on Lewis' cleats.) When Ray Lewis, who regularly wore a fur coat, has more subtle shoes than Derek Jeter, you know Jete's cleats are way too much.

It's funny. I have been hearing for at least the last decade or so about how Jeter was all about humility, the team, and putting the Yankees -- and winning -- first over individual accomplishments. Wasn't that exactly how A-Rod was found wanting? That he was the me-first kind of guy who only cared about individual stuff? Yet here, Jeter does something that is the opposite of his image, and not for the first time, and some Yankee fans, instead of wondering what the heck the captain is thinking, direct their vitriol at folks like me for simply pointing out that Jeter looks like a tool wearing this.

Jeter is supposed to be a role model for children, but do the parents of America want their kids to promote themselves like that? Really? This sort of braggadocio, which is also why I find the Jeter Nike commercial so obnoxious, seems antithetical to his image.

And really, at what point is the Jeter worship enough? When does it end? I have said it before and I will say it again. It is not enough to call him a first-ballot HOFer and a top five Yankee, as I do on my friend Sully Baseball's show (yes, I explain how I give Jeter the nod over DiMaggio.) We also have to think that Jeter is the greatest person to ever play the game, the most humble and wonderful. And when we are done with the Manchurian Candidate-esque accolades, we are not allowed to ever notice when he does me-first things that are the opposite of what he is supposed to be about.

You know, it is one thing for Jeter to stand there and bask in other people saying how wonderful he is. It is more than a little creepy and weird when he himself is doing the praising. Change his name to anybody else's in this scenario, and people would agree. But call out Jeter, and you're just a hater. Good grief.

ask jebron about him

pretty sure he could say "i'm not wearing these shoes"

what are they going to do?  terminate his deal for next season?

Brady has always been a glory whore though, so it wouldnt surprise anybody

Jeter is supposed to the team guy

This is brilliant. The whole 2014 season has served as vehicle to see who can suck Jeter off the best. And this is, of course, exactly how he wanted it. He wasn't going to get trumped by Mariano Rivera, no sir! The breaking point for me was the all-star game where Tony Gwynn was never mentioned once and Jeter was mentioned 234,566 times.

Word

All 10 million should have been there

PS- KC still draws 14k a night

not bad for a metro of about 2 million

nyc metro is 20 million.  using the same ratio, kc would draw 230k per night

that would be a record

Typical Yankees

Spring training involves much more than bullpen sessions, batting practice, and meaningless exhibition games. There's a lot of training that goes on behind the scenes, and not all of it is physical.

Every team conducts some kind of media training in camp because they want their players to know the right way to speak with reporters. They want them to talk to the media but not saying anything controversial, basically. It's easier said than done.

The Yankees, who have to deal with the ruthless New York media, take media training very seriously in spring training. They often bring in guest speakers and show video of what they consider the right and wrong way to act around reporters.

According to ESPN New York's Andrew Marchand, this year the Yankees showed their players video of Cam Newton's and Russell Wilson's recent Super Bowl press conferences.

During the Yankees' media training, the Super Bowl is being used to portray the right and wrong way to act. Part of a video shown to pitchers and catchers compares how Cam Newton handled his Super Bowl loss to the way Russell Wilson dealt with his defeat the previous year